Football Manager 2012 Announced

The new season kicked off last weekend here in Blighty, so a new Football Manager was never going to be far behind.

Perhaps Sports Interactive had already coded Fabregas’ homecoming into the game and was just waiting for the Spaniard to finally sign, but this season’s Football Manager was announce today soon after the prodigal son returned to Camp Nou.

‘Planned to be in stores before Christmas’ the new season, the new game is said to feature over 9,000 800 new features, plus the new rule-changes for the 50-odd leagues it contains. We expect to see players sent off for swearing at Premiership refs, for example, and so surely will see similar incidents in FM12.

‘It’s another year of evolution, with some revolution thrown in for good measure’ said Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive,’so we’re pretty sure our dedicated communities, and hopefully lots of new people too, get to play and enjoy the game when it’s released later in the year.’

There are seven ‘key new and improved areas’ in FM12, according to Sports Interactive and its publisher Sega. Let’s list them for brevity’s sake:

Transfer and contracts will benefit from an ‘improved transfer centre’ and the ability to lock clauses in contracts; some of the these clauses can now be loyalty bonuses. There’s also said to be better youth and part-time contract handling.

Scouting reports are all-new in FM12, and include ‘squad analysis, tactics information and information about goals scored and conceded alongside lots of other scouting improvements.’

The 3D match engine has new animations and a new crowd system, more stadia, improved weather and two new camera angles. You can also reverse all the camera angles, so you can subvert the game in Match of the Day Broadcast Editor 2012 if you so desire.

Manage Anywhere, Anytime is what Sports Interactive is calling the ability to add and remove playable leagues to and from your saved game at any time. This is a great improvement, as previously you were stuck with your original selection, which could either become boring because irrelevant games had to be calculated or restrictive because you fancied a change of location.

The Tone is said to introduce ‘a whole new level’ to team talks and conversations by allowing you to state the tone of the response or statement. There are six different tones to pick from, so you can either present yourself as serenity itself or a raving nut-job. It’s yet to be seen whether a Roy Keane-like menacing glare is an option.

The Intelligent Interface is an adaptive layout system, meaning the high-res screens can show more information but in an intuitive way. There are also new filters, customisable columnns and so on.

Beginners should hopefully appreciate the new tutorial as an easy way into the game, while experienced managers that have maybe been on holiday for a few seasons (Keegan, Hoddle, Hughes etc. we’re guessing) might pick up some tips too. There’s also a new ‘how to’ feature in the game itself.

There are other areas that have been improved too, from the media system to new-gens to international management. But enough of that, let’s see a couple of videos before letting us know what you think of the details in the forum.

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12 Comments

These games are getting worse and worse. Too much focus on the nonessentials, despite plenty of good player feedback. To be fair they do incorporate a fair few ideas from players but still too much window dressing for me. Was an avid player from 01-02 until 10. I don't use the match engine as the matches are the least interesting part of the game really. Apparently they pay their coders rubbish money for the privilege of working there too...

Going to have to disagree with you there, rinseout. Yeah, there is a lot of fluff, but it's being improved. Scout reports are infinitely better than they were in the old days, as is the contract system since the FM11 improvements. The team-talks are incredibly annoying, but this year they're being improved. In time, I suspect so will other things like press conferences. Typically they seem to add in new features and then take a little while to really get to grips with how to implement them well - each time though you're getting a fuller experience.

For what it's worth, I very much doubt I'll be buying FM12. Having owned 09, 10 and 11 in succession I want to get a bit more value out of this one... I suspect I'll be continuing my save game until 13 comes out, or possibly even 14. So many games yet to play that starting another huge FM marathon is fairly unnecessary!

people saying football manager is getting worse are being a bit naive, the game it self is getting better every year, but its how far the game has gone from the fun factor that makes the feel worse (to me anyway).
Ive put fm 2011 down and gone back 10 just because 10 was a bit more fun and accessible, fm11 just felt like it had gone too far away from the fun fantasy mangement game it used to be, but that not to say the game is worse as its TECHNICALLY better but just not as fun for a number of us anymore.

but needless to say i will try the demo probably 3 or 4 times just to get a firm idea of it and try out things a bit different everytime to get a good grip of the game.

fm 2011 is pretty unrealistic once you start taking over the top teams, 10 was alot more fun and you can still win every match using the same 4312 tactic that people have used for years with little to no change required.

Try setting up barcelona to play like they do in real life its nearly imposible, use of closing down tactic results in red cards, dont think ive ever got messi to score 40+ a season either whilst ronaldo scores 50+ every season for any team you buy him for.

Also created a world 11 before brought back old players from there retirements and still lost lol when your team is valued at over 1billion you should not lose to wolves.

used to play champ manager like an adict a few years back these days after 30mins i just get bored and turn it off.

i can understand that (try saying it on the fm forums and youll get shot down :( )

fm 2011 is ALL about tactics, i found it easy to keep players happy but even easier to piss them off, it dosnt matter who you have in your side and even if you r tactics are v good, if they dont agree with the match engine (or vice versa) then you dont have much hope.

with fm 2010, i built up a good young side with good tactics (i think lol) and got them to the prem, sold a few on to make some cash and bought a few more highly rated young players and while they didnt win things straight away, i did notice that with better training schedules and coaches, things always got better season by season and once they had started to mature (towards the mid 20's) i started to win trophies and taking on the best teams in the game.

to me it was all about getting a good set-up tactically, training/coaching and getting a good base of players and letting them gel and mature as a team, this always made me succesfull on fm 07, 08 09 and 10 but could i do this on 11? big fat no.
maybe the game had just moved on too far for me tactically or maybe i just didnt manage my players properly i dont no, but what i do no is that it takes too much effort for me now to be successful on this game.

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